Pattern Awareness -

The Pattern Between a Relaxing Environment and a Good Life
8
Jun

Living in a relaxing environment and a good life is easy to see. The types of people who know when to shut off and how to do that are the people who will, generally speaking, have a more fulfilling, healthy and happy life. We’ve taken a couple of things that we think link back to living a relaxing life, ensuring living in the right environment will help you stay calm and happy. Take a look.

Make a House a Home

There’s a bunch of ways that you can make your home the perfect place to relax. It should be that anyway, but what you have inside your four walls can make a house a home. Start off with some candles. If you’ve got a real fireplace these are really relaxing. Something along the lines of an aquarium or pond in the back garden is a lot more relaxing than you might know and an easy DIY project. You just need the right materials like pond liner and a quality eheim filter. If you’re not familiar with what those products are, you should brush up on information about eheim filters before you make any purchases. But trust me, it’s worth it. The sound of running water trickling through the system can be enough to calm anyone. Remember to try and get the mood lighting right, too. This will help hugely.

Walk the Walk

Exercise releases endorphins that help the way you feel. Doing this a few times a week, even for an hour each time, can make you feel so much better, much more relaxed and calmed too. You can walk around your neighbourhood or find somewhere in the hills to go. Let nature be your gym, so long as you’re getting fresh air and working the heart and muscles, your brain will follow suit. There are plenty of sports you can do alone, be it running or golf, but finding a buddy to come on this journey of relaxation with you will make it much more fun.

Family Time

Family time is hugely important as it lets any issues or trouble come out into the open. Talking things through and being honest with the people closest to you can help with anxiety and keep everyone on the same page emotionally. This doesn’t mean you have to call ‘family meetings’ every two minute, but sitting down to chat, spending time together and allowing everyone to be themselves certainly helps everyone feel much better about life.

Career Life

The link between career life and your happiness is huge, because after all is said and done, your job role comes indirectly from your own personal ambitions. If these aren’t fulfilled then you’re always going to be unhappy, which again – isn’t good. Be sure to keep your career in mind if you’re unhappy. It could be because of this.

These are all basic components of having a good, happy, calm life. They’re the four major factors in anyone’s life. Keeping each of these in check will see you lead a relatively happy life. When this pattern is broken, however, you begin to see the cracks building. Keep an eye on these for a calm existence.

How to Manage Your Sleep Patterns and Enjoy a Higher Quality of Life
17
Nov

You have one life to live, and most of us understand the importance of doing things now that will benefit the quality of our lives later. From eating right and exercising to going to the doctor for regular checkups and more, there’s a lot we can do to maintain the integrity of our bodies and age gracefully. However, there’s an aspect that makes a bigger difference than most give it credit for. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the average adult needs between seven and eight full hours of sleep each night in order for the body to:

Repair muscles
Grow new tissues
Release growth hormones necessary to grow and develop
Restore energy levels

There’s more to sleep than many people acknowledge, and it’s crucial that you get enough rest and relaxation in order to reduce your risk of the development of a number of health problems such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, and even premature mortality. There are a few things you can do to manage proper sleep patterns and enjoy a higher quality of life.

Sleeping Hot

This may sound simple but… turn down your thermostat. You sleep much better in a cooler room covered in blankets or duvets to keep you warm. If you get too hot you can always throw a leg out to help yourself cool down.

Another option is to invest in some cooling sleep technology. Cooling mattress pads actually help to control your body heat so that you aren’t too cold or too hot. This makes a considerable difference in how well we sleep.

Consider Lighting Changes

The body is designed to recognize patterns, and this certainly holds true when it comes to sleep. Most of us naturally become sleepy at night when the sun goes down. In order to ensure you’re ready to close your eyes for the day at the right time, consider making lighting changes in your home to be enjoyed during the hours before bedtime. The goal is to decrease the intensity of the lighting so you can adjust to a dimmer room and encourage the body to prepare for upcoming sleep.

When the temperatures are in the mid to upper 60’s, they’re right to help the body transition to bedtime. Consider installing LED lights on your car and using them to offer slight illumination while you wind down reading or relaxing on the porch. These lights can even help you create a sleek look on your vehicle while getting you physically prepared for restful sleep.

Lose the Electronics

As our society becomes increasingly reliant on electronic devices, our collective sleep quality suffers. When you engage in conversations on social media, watch videos, or just read news articles on illuminated screens, your brain remains active, and you don’t allow it the proper transition to more easily fall asleep when it’s time to do so.

While it may be met with resistance, encourage your household to put a ban on the use of electronics two hours before bedtime, and this isn’t limited to mobile devices. You should even turn off the television. You’ll be surprised to find with what ease you can fall asleep when you’ve allowed your body the natural transition it needs to fall asleep.

Weigh the Pros and Cons of a Late Night

We’ve all had late nights. From staying up all night to study for an exam to rushing to finish the final details of a big work project and more, it can be difficult to fall asleep knowing what lies ahead the next morning. While it may seem to be responsible to stay up late to complete your obligations, first consider the consequences. When you fail to get the sleep you need, your energy levels won’t be optimal the next day. Therefore, even if you do stay up for three extra hours the night before, you’ll suffer for eight the next day, decreasing your overall productivity.

Stress can be a significant hindrance to the enjoyment of proper sleep, and it can be difficult to shut off our thoughts when we have something important coming up. In order to combat that, you have to allow yourself to put it in the back of your mind temporarily while you let your body perform the rejuvenation you need to competently tackle any problem you may face. When you have an important event coming up, prepare the night before by:

Ceasing any work on the project at hand no less than two hours before bedtime
Reading a book before bed
Not eating anything within two hours of going to bed
Turning off all lights in your bedroom to allow your body restful sleep

Making Every Minute Count

When you sleep, you allow your body to go through a number of sleep stages and accomplish many important functions to help keep your body healthy and maintained. However, in such a busy world, it can be easy to neglect the proper amount of sleep we really need. By following these tips, you can let old habits die while you work on developing good ones that will help you more easily manage your sleep and make every minute count.

Weird But True Patterns Between Animals and the Moon
17
Oct

We have all heard mysterious stories of how the moon turns people into werewolves and causes creatures to behave strangely. While this is typically dismissed as simple tall tales, the truth is that there is evidence that the lunar body that orbits our planet could, indeed, have an impact on animals. According to the National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, both human and animal physiology are subject to lunar rhythms. There are a few weird but true patterns that have been exhibited by wildlife during various stages of the lunar cycle.

Badgers and the New Moon

During the new moon (when the moon is between the Earth and the sun), badgers tend to raise their leg when they urinate to mark their territory whereas their legs typically remain down during other times. Researchers believe this is because the new moon provides a darker outdoor setting, and this makes it an ideal time for mating as a single session can take as long as 90 minutes.

This is good to know because badgers are dangerous animals, and they become more aggressive when they are mating. If you plan to go out in an area known for badgers during a new moon, be sure to visit Bushcraft pro. They offer the protection and information you need to stay safe if you should happen to come upon one of these devious creatures.

Increase in Pet Mischief

If you have a dog or cat, you may notice that they get into more mischief during the full moon. In fact, according to Live Science, veterinarians and other workers in animal care found a 23 percent increase in cat visits and 28 percent increase in dog visits to emergency rooms on nights when the moon was fuller. While there is no scientific explanation as to why these statistics exist, it’s suspected that it’s because pets tend to spend more time outdoors at night when the moon is brighter.

Lion Attacks on Humans

While lion attacks on humans aren’t common, when they do occur, it’s most often in the days immediately following a full moon. While this could easily cause us to consider credibility to theories that the full moon makes people and animals crazy, there’s a more likely theory. Since there is a longer gap of darkness between sunset and moonrise during a full moon, it’s more likely for people to be out on these dark nights. Researchers looking for the answers to this phenomenon suspect this simple explanation accounts for the increase in human and lion run-ins.

A Mysterious World

Patterns exist in many forms, and being aware of this fact can make you more attuned to the world around you. While you’re not likely to run into a werewolf anytime soon, there is good evidence to support the claims that the moon does, indeed, have an impact on the behavior of animals. By understanding this, you can make more informed decisions the next time you plan a hunting trip or outdoor family outing.

Shopping Patterns and How the Internet has Changed It
6
Aug

Shopping has never been more tiring than it is today. Before, when you set out to go shopping, it was easier because you only have a few choices, making it faster for shoppers to decide on what to purchase. Now, it will take you hours to look for the perfect dress or shoes or bag because there are a lot of brands, styles and colors to consider, not to mention considering the financial aspect as well. You don’t want to rush into buying something without making sure that it is the best buy in terms of price, brand and material.

This is also the case for food products, drinks, even cars, houses, medicine and almost everything that can be purchased. While it is good to have so many options, it also becomes too much of a headache especially when all products claim that they are the best in their line or industry. This is the reason why people end up confused and this confusion is sometimes taken advantage of, by low quality products, through false advertisement and unbelievably cheap promos.

Thankfully, there is a new tool in town that has helped in “easing” the “troubles” of shopping.

This tool I am referring to is called the Internet. With the birth of online shopping, people are given the chance to shop without getting tired, because they can do it in the comforts of their homes.

Indeed, communication during this time and age has greatly progressed that even shopping has become such a breeze to do. It has allowed people to shop even when they are busy with other things, and it has allowed people to purchase items almost immediately. This has become especially helpful for those times when emergency occurs and a certain item is immediately needed.

In fact, all businesses, even those that are not necessarily fit for online shopping, make sure that they avail of business phone systems that can help them connect with prospect customers and clients. The Internet has really become a major tool in the trading industry during this time and a stable communication line has also become very important in order to keep the customers satisfied with the services.

Just a little warning, though – always be sure to check on every product that you and your family consume so that nobody would suffer. We are given a lot of choices by the market, let us choose to be safe and wise all the time.

Increased Accuracy and Stress Management on the Range
20
Apr

There’s no doubt that in today’s high-pressure, hurried society, you need management techniques to cope with everyday stressors as well as those special occasions when the boss really gets under your skin. While a lot of people turn to meditation or stress toys to help them cope, the therapeutic benefits of a little time at the target range are too often overlooked.

Take Control

Target shooting can be a release in itself. At times, simply feeling the power of recoil from the pistol in your hands, or the rifle against your shoulder can be a uniquely grounding experience. Likewise, to experience that moment of total control when you send bullet to target can be cathartic. Yes, simply the act of shooting can seem to set the world right again when stress has you feeling like you’re at the mercy of the tides.

If you take target practice a bit more seriously, you will find that many of the techniques that you use to master your shot also quiet your mind and body when life’s challenges start to pour on the pressure. While improving your aim with gear is an option, you won’t get very far if you don’t control your mind and body first.

Be Present

Okay, it sounds a little new-agey put that way, but every shooter knows that when he’s thinking of other things, those distractions show on the target. Sloppy groups and all out random flyers aren’t always the fault of your ammunition. If you’re going to shoot well, your mind needs to be there at the range and you have to let the rest of it go. Other people meditate on a flower or repeat a mantra, we push it all out and concentrate on the target. In the end, when you clear your mind and focus on the shot, you’re practicing a type of focused mindfulness that clears away all the extra-curricular garbage from the outside world and can help manage your stress levels once you leave the range.

Control Your Breathing

You can’t shoot a reliable group if the rise and fall of each breath rocks your body unpredictably. Controlled breathing has long been taught as a component of marksmanship. While there are different schools of thought as to when to fire during a breath, as well as opinions about holding breath, breathing patterns and cautionary tales of shooters passing out on the competition range, everyone agrees that you can’t shoot if you’re pulling the trigger at random points in an erratic breathing cycle. Calm controlled breathing is a necessary component of accurate shooting.

When you master your breath, you’re taking control of how your body functions despite outside influences. That’s a big factor in how you handle stress. You can slow down and take control, or you can react. Take that deep cleansing breath before shooting the next round. Calm your breathing and use the stillness of your natural respiratory pause to steady both your shot and your nerves. You’ll walk off the range with a tighter group and leave anxiety behind too.

Picture the Perfect Shot

While other people “go to a happy place,” you picture covering your next group with a dime. It’s a simple technique that clears the mental boogeymen and sets us up for success.

Visualizing positive outcomes is something athletes did long before life coaching became “a thing.” A basketball player pictures the ball swooshing through the hoop. A baseball player sees a ball soaring over the fence. As a shooter, you feel the trigger against your finger, the stock tight against your shoulder,and you picture your next shot leaving the bore, traveling a true line to the target.

Next time you find yourself with clenched fists and sore jaw muscles from biting back those things you’d like to tell the boss, grab your range bag and go. Come home with a bag of empties, a filled target and a better attitude.

Health Patterns You Need
22
Jul

Health Patterns are very useful because they provide a useful structure for assessing the patterns of factors that can influence the drug response, and that can create an impact on compliance and successful results of the drug therapy that we medicate. There are different discussions that health experts are talking about and they want to incorporate both the subjective and the objective data of every health pattern shown.

Health Patterns

There are eleven unique patterns and one can see at how each of the pattern may affect the drug therapy or medication as well as how drug therapy may create an impact on that pattern. There are assessments of this pattern that can provide a rich and reliable database for planning the drug and other therapeutics to use as medication. It provides insights into several beliefs of the client or patient. He wants to be evaluated with his current health practices that may somehow affect the drug therapy, and the resources used to enhance his health needs.

Nature of Health

There are also certain beliefs about the help of the nature of health and the factors affecting it or the reasons that cause a current illness or disease that can provide helpful insights into the beliefs about the disease causation and how this disease should be treated through the drug therapies. The use of some home remedies is a good and important way too to explore and follow since these may also interfere with the drug therapy. However, it can also provide the clues to a client’s or patient’s understanding of his or her health, disease, and its corresponding treatment.

The history of the clients’ current set of medications and their past drug therapies and responses to its drug therapy is extremely essential. It’s because it can also serve to the health to detect any “allergies” or intolerances to the drugs or any familial responses to its drug therapy that may cause more injury or damage to the health of a person.

Getting a good history is very important because these are the basic steps to know if the patients could handle such therapy prescribed or ordered to them by the physicians. Through history taking, the patient will be sure that they are well taken care of especially in their health patterns. In these patterns, patients will be evaluated on how far they can go with the drug therapy needed.

Health Patterns: Effects of Water on Human Condition
28
Jun

Image Credit: h2o2.com

Water is a vital element of life and it would be very beneficial if we understand how this element can help or break humans, understanding its behavior in our environment as it follows its pattern of existence.

Many studies can prove that germs and viruses are able to propagate and multiply much faster when they are provided with an environment that is wet or even just damped. This is because they can gain food and nutrients from water. This is the reason why people are more susceptible to health problems when they are in an environment that is almost always damped.

It is for this reason that people should be wary about the parts of their house that have already been damaged and/or penetrated by water elements such as the roof, the basement, the walls, and almost any other part of the house that can be exposed to water such as rain, dew and water pipes.

This precautionary measure is exactly what my friend Dianne did for her home. She noticed that she was beginning to have rashes all over her body and that she was always sneezing. She had herself checked up and the doctor said she was infected externally. A few months back she had troubles restoring her basement when it was flooded one time. No matter how she cleaned the place, instead of becoming stable, the materials that make up her basement are only crumbling and are becoming weak. She also noticed that it was dirtier than the usual, no matter how much she cleans it all away.

Image Credit: homeimprovements.com

In order to stop the water elements from ruining her home and her health, she had no choice but to have her house reconstructed. All the parts affected by water dampness was replaced and she had to move out for a couple of weeks to have everything settle and to get herself back on a better condition, away from the environment that was slowly ruining her health and body.

Since then, Dianne has noticed that her sickly feelings have gone. She no longer feels dirty because her house is in best condition from the basement up.

It’s a wonderful thing that water can both be curative and destructive. Curative in the sense that it is an essential part of the body. It is able to provide minerals and nutrients as well as heighten oxygen level of the body, and it is very much needed for the body to stay fit and well hydrated. On the other hand, it is destructive when it is able to penetrate in places where it should not be in, because it is not only humans that find nutrients and life in water, but also the different harmful germs and bacteria.

Now that we know this about water, we can see a pattern that proves how one single element can have positive and negative effects on us. It is about handling and knowing these things that can secure us from ever facing dangers while reaping the benefits.

The Internet – Following the Pattern of the Future
27
Jun

Some people would like to say that life is one big surprise party. You’ll never guess what you’ll get until you open the door. However, not all things in life come as surprises. There are some that were planned, patterned, and molded. One amazing example is the Internet.

Back when I was still a kid, I’ve watched science fiction movies where characters traveling in space would suddenly get a video transmission of their allies from a different planet. I’d usually ask my father if the television show was real; he’d just laugh and pat my head. Skip twenty five years later and now, we have Skype, Yahoo Messenger, and Google Hangouts.

It’s kind of amazing how the Internet evolved. My earliest memories of ever using the Internet was way back in 1999. I was learning how to use the email. Everyone thought that the Internet was something that was thought of back in the late 80’s and was now implemented in the 90’s. However, the concept of having a “World Wide Web” already existed in 1962.

A certain J.C.R Licklider from MIT produced a series of memos in August of 1962 where he described his “World Network” concept. He envisioned a world where computers were interconnected and everyone would be able to access data from any site in the world. If you think about it, the whole pattern does remind you of the Internet, right?

In order to make his vision a reality, Mr. Licklider became the first head of the computer research program in DARPA in October 1962. However, a year before Licklider thought of the World Wide Web, Leonard Kleinrock have already published his first paper on packet switching theory. For all computer and Internet geeks out there, yes, he was already researching about data packets. Kleinrock then convinced his friend, Lawrence G. Roberts that it is possible for two computers to “communicate” via packets instead of circuits. Roberts was a good friend of Licklider, therefore he worked with Thomas Merill in 1965 to connect the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32 computer in California using a low speed dial-up telephone line. This became the first ever wide-area computer network ever built.

That was also the first ever dial-up connection. You could say that the event was the one that spawned all other Internet connections that we know today. Kleinrock, Licklider, and Roberts would become the pioneers of the Internet and more collaborations from other networking experts improved the way data packets were sent from one computer to the other. It wasn’t until the late 1970’s that the research community became very interested with the Internet, due to its rapid growth in the past few years. In the early 1980’s, dozens of vendors have expressed interest in developing commercial products for implementing Internet technology. A lot of vendors at that time have started using TCP/IP in their products.

Then in 1995, the FNC unanimously passed a resolution the defined the word “Internet”.

Breaking Stereotypes and Standing Out
17
Jun

Stereotypes are nothing more but the idea that people get from a certain group because of the pattern in behavior, action, and preference.

Image Credit: geekwire.com

Geeks are people with glasses, freckles, braces, and are walking encyclopedias and calculators who are already in the borderline of insanity. At least that is what the pattern shows and it is what people are lead to believe is true or near reality. They are also called nerds, brainiacs, etc.

Another stereotype familiar to everyone is that blondes are dumb. This stereotype could really hurt people and this is not true altogether.

As to how these stereotypes started, I really could not tell. Just that most of the time, stereotypes are quite mean and insulting, and if you are someone who can’t take these kinds of things lightly, and you somehow have been stereotyped, then you will really have a difficult time handling your emotions and you might end up in a fight with other people, because really, stereotypes will continue to exist because human behavior patterns exist. As much as we want to deviate from the norm and be unique, there will still be an aspect of life that will fall into a pattern that can be associated with a stereotype.

Another form of stereotyping is by judging people even before meeting them, depending on their work. An example of this is how people stereotype chefs to be fat people. When someone is asked to think of a chef, the picture that comes into mind is that of a fat, round man or woman in a chef’s hat and uniform, slicing away the potatoes or shouting orders at their second in command, grumpy-looking and with casual burns here and there.

Image Credit: wellandgood.com

People think that because chefs do nothing all day but cook and taste food and look at food and be surrounded by food, that they would, without a choice, be fat. Food is a chef’s life and therefore it is inevitable to end up eating round the clock.

Apparently, while there is no harm in loving food, there is harm in being fat. This harm, can be physical(because fat can cause diseases in the body, not necessarily physical harm from other people), or it can be emotional, which is the case when being stereotyped. You do not get the chance to prove them wrong. No matter how you convince someone that they are wrong, another person would come along and judge you for the same thing. It would be futile to convince everyone because it would be difficult to reach everyone.

These patterns in life are what helped form the society we live in today. Seeing pattern in things is a good thing. However, like most things, it also tends to lead us to see patterns that are of negative effect. It is up to us to make sure that we do not get easily hurt when we are categorized in a pattern. After all, we should know ourselves better than anyone else and if we are confident about who we really are, stereotype or no stereotype, we will not be easily offended and we can live and enjoy life regardless of what others have to say.